Congestion Pricing Commission’s First Meeting

9:20 AM EDT on September 20, 2007

The Congestion Pricing Commission will meet for the first time next week, bringing together the 17 people who must choose between Mayor Mike Bloomberg's traffic mitigation plan and some other program. To qualify for a $354.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation, a plan must involve a pricing component and must yield a reduction in traffic similar to the mayor's 6.3% estimate. Those are the terms written into a deal Albany leaders sealed in July.

Also from the Insider, the next day:

Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver's office called to correct the name of the group that is considering traffic-reduction projects in Manhattan: It's the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission, not the Congestion Pricing Commission, as the Insider wrote Wednesday. Clearly, the speaker prefers to de-emphasize congestion pricing. Silver's office also noted the commission can consider options that do not involve pricing.

Aaron Donovan

Before he began blogging about land use and transportation, Aaron Donovan wrote The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund's annual fundraising appeal for three years and earned a master's degree in urban planning from Columbia. Since then, he has worked for nonprofit organizations devoted to New York City economic development. He lives and works in the Financial District, and sees New York's pre-automobile built form as an asset that makes New York unique in the United States, and as a strategic advantage that should be capitalized upon.